THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604270247
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUANITA RAISOR, BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
At 73, Thomas Kelly isn't exactly the youthful model for Calvin Klein garments, but the international designer is interested in this Virginia Beach business man just the same.
Kelly may become a hot commodity in the fashion business because cotton is hot with consumers, and he has the lock on making cotton flame retardant. It all started years ago.
Kelly, a chemist and inventor, formed Kelsul Inc. in 1977. Single-handedly, he developed the first flame retardant process to enable cotton to meet the federal standards for the automotive industries. And, he created a flame retardant process, also developed from cotton, to meet federal standard for residential insulation.
Being an inventor, he needed someone with the equipment to make the products.
He turned to a seasonal cotton cleaning plant in Lulu, Miss., which was not in operation.
Lulu Cotton Processing Inc. was created to manufacture the cotton insulation, and Kelly was put in charge of managing the plant and marketing the product. He worked for a percentage of the profit.
``Cotton was an excellent use for insulation since 5 1/4 inches of blown cotton was equivalent to nine inches of fiberglass,'' he said.
That was true until 1982. Then the price of cotton went up and the price of fiberglass went down. The plant closed its doors. But you can't get a good chemist down.
Kelly developed the first flame retardant and wet process for cotton, to meet the federal standards for mattresses. ``The process was installed in some Sealy and Serta plants,'' Kelly said.
Long before forming Kelsul Inc., Kelly was a chemist for Virginia Chemicals. He has been busy with cotton research and development, inventing various processes for the use of cotton for more than 25 years.
As his experiments with cotton continued, the word spread. ``Someone suggested to me that I might look at the arts and crafts market for my cotton batting,'' Kelly said.
He questioned the market being large enough for his efforts, but checked anyway and found it was a booming $1.5 billion operation.
``There were about 150 quilters involved in the Hampton Roads Quilters Guild. And that those ladies spend about $350 each per year on material,'' he added.
That adds up to a little over $53,000 per year of possible sales just in this area.
Pursuing yet another possible venture, Kelly called on the help of a Chesapeake professional quilter, Bertie Campbell, to serve as his consultant, testing each of the cotton batting samples as they were developed.
Her tests proved to Kelly that this was a high quality, marketable product.
But to test the retail market himself, Kelly and his daughter Kathleen Thompson, who is vice president of Kelsul, introduced their cotton batting in April 1995 in Charlotte at the Quilters Show.
They received so many orders they decided to open a facility to warehouse and distribute the batting made from the North Carolina-grown cotton at the International Parkway facility in Virginia Beach.
Last winter Kelly created Quilters Cotton, a Kelsul division, and asked Thompson to serve as general manager.
The facility now processes, packages, and markets various lofts and sizes of the cotton batting to 46 states nationally, primarily for quilting and crafts, but also for thermal and acoustical applications.
Which brings us back to Calvin Klein.
Calvin Klein is inquiring about a material for use in the development of its Home Innovations products.
And, if Calvin Klein products represent style and quality to you, it's understandable to Kelly why they would contact him to inquire about the 100 percent cotton batting that his company markets.
``Calvin Klein called us because they wanted a return to the natural product. They want to use natural products in their new bedding line'', he said.
Since that call, others have inquired about a possible vested interest in the business - a call came recently from Korea. But Kelly wants to keep the business a family operation.
``If I can't make a quality product I don't want to do it at all,'' Kelly said.
And he'll wait for the right call - the one that convinces him it's time to consider a plant to process the cotton. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Tom Kelly and his daughter Kathleen Thompson run Quilters Cotton.
by CNB